Ask Auntie Pinko
June 19, 2003

Dear Auntie Pinko,

I have witnessed many debates on the internet where the debaters are using the phrases "neoconservative" and "neoliberal". How is a neoconservative different from a conservative? How is a neoliberal different from a liberal?

Joe,
Reading, PA

Dear Joe,

The Greek "neo" means "new," so it would seem that "neoconservatives" and "neoliberals" are "new" conservatives and liberals, wouldn't it? But that still doesn't do much to explain what is signified by "new" and how it might differ (presumably) from "old."

The terms "liberal" and "conservative" have had many meanings since the rise of participatory government in the modern era - that is, government in which the citizens exercise some kind of determinative power. In the most general sense, (Auntie has discussed this before,) "liberal" refers to the approach that favors change, evolution, and seeking new methods to address the needs of a society. "Conservative," on the other hand, refers to an approach based on preserving and expanding the power of society's most effective existing or past tools for meeting its needs.

To be healthy politically, socially, and culturally, a society needs a good creative tension between these two approaches, hopefully both conserving the best of the tried and true, and developing creative new ways to address its problems and goals. From this standpoint, Joe, "liberal" and "conservative" are value-neutral terms with good, serviceable definitions.

But the challenges and opportunities facing America are always changing, and they tend to crystallize into issues, and groups of issues, that absorb the public's attention. The different approaches of liberals and conservatives to each group of issues become attached to agenda items. So we tend to see these agenda items as defining "liberal" and "conservative," rather than the underlying attitudes of "change" and "preservation."

At the end of the nineteenth century, if you described someone as a "liberal" or a "conservative," the impression in the minds of your listeners would have nothing to do with tax policy or abortion. Rather, your listener would assume you were describing that person's stand on the gold standard or the United States' emergence as a colonial power.

Auntie Pinko is old enough to remember when the terms applied to liberals were the "old lefties" versus the "new left." The "old lefty" agenda was defined by issues connected to labor, and the American attitude towards socialism and communism. Later, the "new left" embraced a range of agenda items that stretched from civil rights through opposition to basing America's foreign policy on military intervention, assassination, and the maintenance of autocratic right-wing client states as a way of fighting communism.

Auntie Pinko has always been quite comfortable with embracing elements of both the "old left" and the "new left" agendas, but I have to admit I'm not really au courant about what constitutes the "neoliberal" agenda. So I did a little internet searching to investigate.

I cannot claim to have done an exhaustive search, but I had the impression that "neoliberal" is being used in two ways. One is a very conscious attempt to define the policies of the Liberal parties in Canada and the United Kingdom, and I can't really speak to that as I've not been observing them closely. The other seems to be a perjorative, ironic, or perhaps consciously paradoxical way to describe those who identify themselves as Democrats or liberals, but whose agenda includes views that are more traditionally associated with conservatives or Republicans.

The area where those being described as "neoliberal" seem to differ most sharply from the unqualified "liberals" is economic policies. Views most readily associated with liberals over the last fifty years endorse an approximately equal balance of economic power between labor, capital, and the public, with government proactively adjusting the balance. "Neoliberal" seems to describe an approach based on a capital-driven economy, in which public interest is addressed by "the market." This view seems to endorse governmental intervention only to protect the most basic health/safety concerns, and gives the impression that the interests of labor are subsumed within the interests of the pubic, and thus do not require separate attention.

"Neoconservative," on the other hand, seems to be a term embraced by those who differ from their unqualified conservative colleagues mainly on social policy issues. When Auntie Pinko was much younger, the most important items on the Republican agenda were the vigorous and interventionist containment of communism by any means necessary, and the very same economic policies being embraced today by "neoliberals." For many Republicans, "social" and "moral" issues were a waste of the government's time.

Thirty years from now, Joe, I'm quite certain that the agendas which spring to mind when the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are mentioned will be quite different. Definitions mutate and change, and Auntie Pinko is still around then, I hope you'll drop me a note to compare our reminiscences of what meant which in 2003. Thanks for asking Auntie Pinko!

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